Thursday, May 02, 2013

CFP: Interdisciplinary approaches to visual narrative

For those that might be interested, one of my projects is trying to organize a book summarizing important research on visual narrative. This book will be a companion volume to my book out later this year, The Visual Language of Comics. If you may be interested in contributing, here's a Call For Papers for it...

CFP: Interdisciplinary approaches to visual narrative

While there have been a growing number of books on comics in recent years, very few have addressed aspects of structure, particularly from theoretical, cognitive, or experimental points of view and outside the realm of literary or sociocultural theory. I am working to organize a compilation of important papers on the understanding of sequential images. Most of the chapters will be either 1) summary papers that provide extensive bibliographies that can provide an overview to students and a resource to other researchers, or 2) reprints of significant research that remain under-recognized or hard-to-find.

This Call for Papers asks for proposals for papers of two types of chapters focused particularly on research outside of English, presented for an English speaking audience:

1. Chapters that summarize, in English, advances in comic theory from non-English speaking researchers. Such chapters should be large in scope with extensive reference sections.

2. Translations into English of significant non-English comic theory (structural, cognitive, experimental, etc.) from important papers or book chapters.

Topics or chapters outside this scope may be considered, though best to contact me directly with inquiries. (Of interest may be: review papers of other types, historical development of comic “symbology”, empirically grounded discussions of differences between comics cross-culturally, etc.). Importantly, papers should be relevant not only to scholars of comics, but also to linguists, cognitive scientists, and psychologists.

Contributor Guidelines

1. Abstracts of 400-500 words accepted. Papers of 5000-9000 words, including notes and bibliography, accepted. Please also include a short biographical statement.

2. All documents should be submitted as Word or Word-compatible files. PDFs are also acceptable.